Daughter of Malcolm X: Dreams Turned to Dust

By JOE SEXTON

Published: January 22, 1995

After leading a life shaded by tragedy and personal turmoil, Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz told friends last September that she had decided to leave New York City and her $60-a-week room in a crumbling apartment and move to Minnesota. She told them that she was going to be married there, get a well-paying job and get her son the medical care he needed.

But things did not work out as planned. The 34-year-old daughter of Malcolm X did not land a secure job. Her 10-year-old son was placed in a children's shelter, said a person familiar with her situation in Minneapolis.

And the man she told friends she was going to marry, Michael Fitzpatrick, wound up turning her in to the Federal authorities, saying she had tried to hire him to kill Louis Farrakhan, the minister of the Nation of Islam. Ms. Shabazz's mother, Dr. Betty Shabazz, has said she believed Mr. Farrakhan was involved in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X.

The portrait of Ms. Shabazz that has begun to emerge since she was arrested in Minnesota 10 days ago is complicated and incomplete. She is described by friends as smart and quiet, eager to remain anonymous and determined to preserve her independence, even when that meant living an often marginal daily life in rundown apartments in blighted neighborhoods. Neither Ms. Shabazz, who was just 4 when she witnessed the assassination of her father, nor any of her family would agree to be interviewed for this article.

But the evolving picture of a single mother who failed to find regular employment and a permanent home for her son differs from the Government's description of her as the mastermind behind a plot to murder Mr. Farrakhan, and as someone with the financial wherewithal to come up with as much as the $1,000 down payment the Government says she paid. As one friend, who met her soon after she arrived in Minneapolis, has said, "She didn't have any money; how's she going to hire a hit man?"

But the Government is said to have audiotapes and videotapes documenting Ms. Shabazz's scheme and a statement signed by Ms. Shabazz about her role in the plan.

Ms. Shabazz's lawyers contend that any statements she made were given without the assistance of legal counsel. Further, they assert that she was a vulnerable woman entrapped by a manipulative friend and overzealous investigators.

William Kunstler, the lawyer representing Ms. Shabazz, said that "I feel this was a person very carefully selected" as the target of the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "One, because of access. Two, because her life has not been an easy one emotionally," he said.

Ms. Shabazz had hoped life in Minnesota would be easier, her friends said, and the appeal of going there was great. Ms. Shabazz liked to travel, they said, and she told them that she hoped that her son, Malcolm, might have greater access to quality child care and medical treatment for hyperactivity.

Friends said she told them that she had been contacted in June by Mr. Fitzpatrick and that she had decided, at his encouragement, to move to Minneapolis to marry him. Mr. Fitzpatrick was a high school friend who was convicted for the bombing of a bookstore that sold Russian books in Manhattan and was an informer on the planned bombing of the Egyptian tourism office in Manhattan.

"Qubilah -- we called her QB -- was a bright girl who never had much money," said Ingram Fox, who lived in the same apartment building on Riverside Drive as Ms. Shabazz last summer. "She never spoke of her father, and she'd get mad at me if I mentioned it in front of anyone else. I told her not to go to Minnesota. But she told me she was going there to get married, that Fitzpatrick wanted to marry her."

When Ms. Shabazz first arrived in Minnesota, she lived in a $50-a-night motel often used by the local social service department to house newly arrived residents with little money. She later moved to a modest apartment in a working-class neighborhood.

Every week or two, Ms. Shabazz cashed payroll checks of $100 to $150, said Edwin Daniel, a clerk at The Money Exchange, a check-cashing business near the apartment. It is not clear if Ms. Shabazz, who had told at least one acquaintance that she was considering applying for welfare, had a steady job or whether she earned her checks in temporary jobs.

But last month, weeks before she was arrested, a court ordered Ms. Shabazz's son to be taken to a children's home and shelter in Minneapolis because of neglect, The New York Times has learned. A social worker familiar with the case said that the child had asked to be returned to his maternal aunt in New York.

The boy's status could complicate plans by Ms. Shabazz's lawyers to have her return to New York while she awaits a trial.

Gordon Parks Sr., the film director and musician who is Ms. Shabazz's godfather, said she had never called asking for assistance and had never indicated in any telephone conversations from Minnesota that she or her son was in distress. Mr. Parks said that he even spoke with Ms. Shabazz the day before her arrest on Jan. 12 and that she did not mention any problems. Prosecutors have said Ms. Shabazz was notified two weeks before her arrest that she was the target of an F.B.I. inquiry.

"She knows she could have asked me for help," said Mr. Parks, who lives in New York but has relatives in the Minneapolis area. "It's been asked for and given before. She never asked."